Thursday, August 19, 2004

Here is gold mine suggestion from a salesman I know at a specialized B2B company.

He mentioned to me how he spends extensive time online researching his customers. Instead of cold calling the engineer when he finds a potential customer, he writes a brief but detailed to the point email about the product that the salesman provides. He mentions that he had done research on their company and believes that the manufacturing capabilities would be an excellent fit with the product the customer makes. He references in (hyperlink text) the specific website pages that are related. (This is very important from a landing page perspective. You do not want to have the customer to wade through the whole site to find the information.)

This has been a very successful strategy for bringing in new customers. The salesman mentioned from his experience, that engineers are not likely to take cold calls, but with a personal email are very likely to respond. In fact, he has been complemented by the customers for the information that is provided.

If there is not a response to the email after a few days he then calls and introduces himself while referencing the email sent.

While this type of marketing may seem to take a lot of time it actually has an excellent ROI.

When dealing with a B2B customer it is important to establish a close relationship. If done right, you will have a customer for life…